Carter nearly laughed. He knew the capacity of his mine--quarry, it was, rather--and the hold space of the little _M'poso_. Tin was wavering about just under £176 per ton just then; he had reckoned that he could produce for £10 a ton; and the more profit he could get, the more pleased he would be. But he was not afraid of bringing down the price; he had plenty of margin for a cut. His only fear was that the river road might be stopped before he had made his fortune. And he intended to empty the veins of Tin Hill at the highest speed that all the strained resources of Africa were capable of, and if necessary to keep three steamers the size of the little _M'poso_ ferrying his riches across to the markets. But he did not let out any word of this to Image. If the locality and the enormous wealth of this mine were to leak out, nothing could prevent a rush. At the existing moment he was penniless, and in any great influx of capital and men must inevitably be swamped. Secrecy was essentially his game for the present. So he accepted Captain Image's proposal in the spirit in which it was made, and then put forward feelers for a steam launch. Was there such a thing already on the Coast that one could pick up cheap just then? Captain Image lit a thoughtful pipe. "I don't know of any little steamboat that you could buy just now out here, cheap or dear. There are one or two in Sarry Leone, certainly, but they are all either too big for your job or too tender to bring round the Coast." "I'm a bit of mechanic, you know. I wouldn't mind nursing engines. My boy, White-Man's-Trouble, too, would make, according to his own account, a pretty decent second engineer." "Oh, I know him. Used to be stand-by-at-crane boy on the _Secondee_, and stole everything that wasn't nailed down. But you'd never get one of those Sarry Leone wrecks round here without being drowned in the process. I tell you what, though. D'ye know anything about motor cars, me lad?" "Why?" asked Carter, who had never handled one in his life. "Because at Dutton and Maidson's factory at Copper River they've got an old wreck of an oil launch, if she hasn't rotted and sunk at moorings, that you could have cheap." "Everything cheap is dear to me just now. I haven't a penny in my pocket. But what do you mean by cheap?" "Well, she certainly wasn't out in the river the last three times I called, but I did hear they'd hauled her up a creek. But if she hasn't sunk at moorings, and the ants haven't walked off with her, I should think you could get the bits that rust couldn't eat for three ten-pound notes." "Does she burn gasolene?"